


Thinking with Portals is Brilliant!

by Punk_Kenobi



Category: Cabin Pressure, Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, I love both series too much, but i had to, i don't know what i was thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:17:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punk_Kenobi/pseuds/Punk_Kenobi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS can't get her testing fix and the Three Amigos fool around with the various testing equipment. GLaDOS doesn't mind at all, oddly enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thinking with Portals is Brilliant!

**Author's Note:**

> First off, this was inspired by [thelilnan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilnan/pseuds/thelilnan) and her fucking adorable Cabin Portal crossover sketches on her Tumblr. I can't find them at the moment, but if I find them I'll link them. She has plenty of great Cabin Pressure AND Portal fanart to peruse as well. 
> 
> Second, this is just stupid but I love Portal so much it's not even funny. I've played the games too many times to count and I'm still learning little tidbits of info about the lore surrounding them. I've never been a lore-friendly person in games unless the story catches me the right way and Portal/Portal 2 did that. 
> 
> Thirdly, un-beta'd as usual, though there's no real Brit-picking that needed to happen so that's good.

_Atlas and P-Body were in for repairs. Even robots such as themselves could put up with so much abuse before their systems were shot. They performed admirably but they needed some down time, and GLaDOS still needed her fix._

_She needed another distraction. More humans would work, she thought. Quite fragile, a bit too autonomous for her liking, but they'd do in the meantime as a temporary stop-gap measure. These were subjects taken from a half-destroyed Extended Relaxation Center unit found in a pile of others, curiously dubbed GERTI in the computer mainframe files. How long had they been there and why were they all in one? And why were they never accounted for? Computer error, most likely, she'd have to incinerate the robot in charge of the units. One pathetic human to a unit, that was the rule. Wheatley's replacement would be getting an earful. Oh well, the humans knew each other. That could work out very well or very badly in her favor._

_However, it really was neither. The only problem was that her testing fix would go unfulfilled indefinitely at this rate. The newest test subjects were....less than focused than she'd hoped for._

\---------

"Skip, look at this!" 

Arthur poked his head through a portal, beaming, and his head appeared on the opposite wall. They had just retrieved their portal guns and were exploring the various amusing uses they could provide. Douglas was simply testing the waters by walking through them and Martin was too nervous to try anything at all.

A portal on the ceiling was opened as Arthur shot a parallel one on the floor. Putting his toe in, he looked up with a smile to see his foot emerge from the ceiling. With that, he grinned.

"Geronimo!" 

Martin started, nervously watching Arthur continually fall from the ceiling. "Arthur, no! What are you doing?!"

Arthur was having the time of his life, laughing while falling in an infinite loop. "This is brilliant, Skip!" 

Martin just shook his head, holding his head in his hand. Douglas chuckled. "Of course, we could always use these for more productive means. Observe." 

Placing a portal on the floor and one on the wall, Douglas jumped in and found himself touching back on the ground faster than he thought. Physics is an annoying thing. Thinking, he climbed up onto a ledge via a ladder and jumped in again, finding himself flying through the air and landing right next to the exit, a grin plastered on his face.

"Et là vous allez."

Martin huffed and crossed his arms, the gun on his arm making things feel awkward, muttering. "Show-off."

\---------

_The test subjects were nearly infuriating with their delays. One seemed more intelligent than the others, but even he succumbed to distraction._

\---------

"Oh my, what a nice view I have."

Martin simply rolled his eyes, ignoring the man grinning and staring at his own ass. He was hell-bent on getting through these tests, even if it seemed there wasn't much point in them.

"Douglas, get your head out of those portals. You'll fall through doing that long enough and it isn't doing your ego any favors."

Arthur wasn't much better. He was flying back and forth on the Aerial Faith Plates with glee, laughing happily and comparing himself to various bird species.

"Arthur, penguins can't even fly!" Martin groaned, his palm meeting his forehead.

This wasn't going to go anywhere anytime soon.

\-----------

_GLaDOS had shouted at them many times by now, but the only one really affected was the orange-haired one, and he seemed more frustrated by the other two than anything. That one was her favorite so far._

_She usually just killed her subjects if they didn't perform efficiently, but not only did she like the orange-haired one enough to spare him, she decided to keep all three. They would be vastly less efficient than they already were if she killed one of them and the thought of less efficiency made her seethe. The orange-haired one had the motivation to complete the tests, which she liked. It meant her fix would be received quicker. The older one had the intelligence, it was difficult to program a test he couldn't solve. The two of them would be very useful. The dumb one, though? GLaDOS was reminded of Wheatley. She wasn't sentimental in the least, that was a purely human trait, but then again...Caroline was in here, too. She'll have to find a way to delete her at some point. She'd tried many times in the past, but the human's presence was nearly impossible to remove. She was no more than a feeling in the very depths of GLaDOS' programming, but Caroline occasionally influenced her choices._

_Perhaps it was Caroline who wanted to keep the dumb one around. Just great._

\------------

"Oh, now there's gel?!"

Martin couldn't believe it. More and more gimmicks showed up which caused their progress to slow drastically with each new one. Arthur kept using the Repulsion Gel like a trampoline and Douglas was busy climbing the walls with the Adhesion Gel. This clearly wasn't going to go well. Martin thought a bit on how they could solve the newest test they were faced with, but when Arthur jumped a little too high, the Adhesion Gel on the ceiling kept him fixed there. 

"Martin, look! This is brilliant!" 

_Everything's been brilliant,_ Martin thought. _Even those times you nearly died._

"But I didn't, though, did I?" The thought, spoken in Arthur's voice, popped into Martin's head and he smiled despite it all. Arthur really was quite dim and rarely ever helped their progress despite the occasional, mostly accidental stroke of genius, but he was having fun with it, at least.

"We're like spiders, now aren't we, Arthur?" Douglas chimed, spurning more wonder and amusement from the younger man. 

"We are!"

\-------------

_Caroline really wanted all three of them to stay alive, in fact. GLaDOS had no choice but to acquiesce. How could she go against the word of the woman who began her own very existence? Even if she wanted to terminate the human mind, GLaDOS acknowledged that she wouldn't exist without Caroline. And somehow, these three fooling around made Caroline happy. No more than a pleasant feeling emanating from her memory banks, GLaDOS still felt it and she supposed she could make an exception to her subject termination rule._

_The tests would never get done, but it made for some....rather amusing shows of human idiocy. GLaDOS could settle for that and Caroline seemed to love it. One word floated to the surface of GLaDOS' memory banks from the small area where Caroline resided. GLaDOS agreed with the sentiment, one of the few times she'd ever done so._

_"Clots."_

_At times, Caroline could be quite pleasant to share space with, actually._

**Author's Note:**

> By the way, for those that don't generally look at the Portal wiki(Or any wiki) out of boredom, the Adhesion Gel was an unused gel that was scrapped during development. The gist was that it let you stick to walls and ceilings like a regular Spiderman but play testers got really fucking confused and disoriented. I don't blame them, even if it seemed cool. Thinking with portals when you can be on any surface? Headache material.
> 
> Also, I know that in-game, GLaDOS was said to have destroyed Caroline's memory. However, "Want You Gone" suggests that Caroline came back or was never fully destroyed in the first place. And Ellen McLain has said that, in her opinion, Caroline was never destroyed at all. I like to think that if GLaDOS destroyed Caroline's mind, she'd destroy a vital part of the reason she's a sentient and intelligent AI. Without Caroline, GLaDOS would have little to no sentience at all. With that said, I think that Caroline's influence, while minimal, would be enough to occasionally tip GLaDOS into a more....positive light, like the end of Portal 2.
> 
> So yeah, that's just why things are the way they are.


End file.
